Pre-Market vs. After-Hours Stock Trading

Pre-Market Stock Trading

As its name suggests, pre-market stock trading occurs before the stock market opens up for its regular hours of trading at 9:30
a.m ET. Pre-market stock trading, on the other hand, takes place between the hours of 8:00 to 9:30 a.m. ET.

Investors like to trade in the pre-market session for the same reason they like to trade in the after-hours trading session…
they want to get a leg up on the competition by reacting quickly to news announcements that occur when the regular market is closed.

After-Hours Stock Trading

After-hours stock trading takes place between the hours of 4:00 to 6:30 p.m. ET.

But why would you want to trade stocks in the after-hours trading session?

According to Chris Concannon, an executive VP in the Transaction Services Group at NASDAQ, “Many companies report earnings either
before the market opens or after the market closes. The intrinsic value of a stock is constantly moving whether the market is
open or not, and people want to access the market when the intrinsic value is changing.”